It could take ten years or more to become apparent, but I’ll call it now: the electric car will replace the internal combustion engine.

A caveat: I am not an automotive industry expert. Which is why I’m right. I’m not mired in the details, the past failures, the what ifs or the buts. All I see are the big, obvious things. When it comes to sea change in human behavior, though, obvious matters.

So, since no prediction is worth its salt without an accompanying list, the following are five overlapping reasons why our children will all be driving electric cars.

(By the way, these all assume that business as usual; that is, running cars on gasoline derived from (imported, finite, polluting) oil is unsustainable. If you disagree, you’re at the wrong website.)

1. Momentum, aka, Forget Tesla. “Automotive start-up” may be an oxymoron, but it doesn’t matter. Even if electric car company Tesla and its little buddies don’t succeed, the fact is the big car companies are all developing EVs, or hybrid plug-ins, where the emphasis will increasingly be on the electric part, not the gasoline part.

"Electricity always wins", since the beginning of the 20th century actually. Already Lenin said: "Progress is two things: Electrification and Socialism". Even with some reservations, he seems to have understood the broad trends.